NEXUS – DEPARTURE AND ARRIVAL PORTALS

Two lab techs dropped dead behind Bunnie as she turned with a start, Darius' rotting body behind them. Lowering his hand he sneered at her.

"Be more mindful wench.." his voice echoed. "We're too close to let our plans be stopped by your carelessness!" His eyes shed a bright glow as he finished his words, several flakes of fur falling from his rotting hosts body.

"Do try to pull yourself together, we're almost ready.." Bunnie said, smiling insincerely and plugging a round device into the front of a huge control panel.

Connected to the panel she plugged into was a superstructure of power and communication cables, all centered on a series of six or seven metal rings that constructed the event horizon for the portal. Next to the panels was the body of the unconscious Karen, none the worse for wear.

Darius staggered over, looking over the body of Chris' girlfriend with a distinctly menacing grin. "Excellent…" He said, reaching to her with a paw and stroking her hair out of the way of one of her eyes. "How long until you can activate?" He set the two transport modules next to Bunnie, who was typing at the console, rapid buzzing sounds coming from it's tiny speakers.

"Need a bit, they've locked down everything, my virus should be eating away at the procedural lockdown.." she began with a smile, several panels lit up red in front of her, then turned green as a massive hum from the generator in the room began. "Now. Just need to boot up the main program."

"Not a chance!" Christoph said, a grate falling through to the floor near the three of them. The hedgehog landed with a three point stance, his plasma sword lit green as an emerald lighting the floor and his face with it's color. He looked directly at them, Darius' figure over Karen's body gave him an unexpected start. "Karen..?!"

Bunnie didn't say a word and begin typing at the console, an alarm sounding and four tesla coil shaped rods appeared around the base of the room, firing up after several electrical bursts.

"Chris she's activated the maximum containment field…" Recon began.

"A Backstabbing rabbit and a parasite with a withering host, I think the odds are more then fair." Chris' face returned to his confident half smirk, assuming a defensive position with his blade and moving towards them. "Step away little rabbit.."

Darius' body fell to the side as Chris finished and took his second step, causing him to falter. To Chris' dismay, Karen stood up, then levitated, throwing her arms forward at him and sending a visible shock wave of kinetic energy at him, sending Chris into the force field that surrounded them, his momentum holding him against it for a second before he fell forward.

"I'd say the odds are in my favor now, Chris." Karen spoke, but with an intermingling of Darius' voice as well, her eyes ablaze with a red inner glow. He levitated towards his fallen victim, turning to Bunnie for a moment. "Get the program on line, I'll deal with him." He snapped his hosts head back, her black hair swishing messily around the disrupted gravity around it. Another gesture with his right hand and Chris lifted up, an invisible force tightening around him like a vice as he hung there. "You seem surprised my little gray friend…"

Chris grabbed at his chest, dropping his hilt, the blade disappearing as it turned off. Clenching his eyes, he forced them open enough to stare back at his girlfriend's possessed body in front of him, crushing the breath form him.

"You didn't really think you captured me at full strength did you?" Darius' voice began to overtake Karen's as he continued, looking back to the wolf's corpse. "Nigel was nearing the end of his usefulness when you stumbled, quite luckily I might add, into the throne room." He snapped his glowing read eyes back at Chris. "Now I do believe we have some unfinished business."

Chris' eyes bolted open as he felt the pressure increase and then suddenly he was flung against a perpendicular wall, stopping just short of it by the forcefield. "NGH!" He dropped as his eyes filled with Darius' laughter. He coughed to catch his breath, reaching towards his fallen hilt, about eighty feet away. "Recon, magnetics." He croaked out, his voice returning slowly as his AI Partner activated a pair of powerful finely tuned magnets on Chris' glove and the hilt, it soared toward him and landed fast and hard into his hand.

Bunnie ignored the two, eyes locked onto the console as she brought the main system online, fighting off the few attempts the outside to cut her off. The final sequence locked in and the rings of the portal started to rotate, gaining speed with each rotation. She pulled up a list of destinations and highlighted "HADES", letting the several strings of coordinates loading into the system at lightening speed, a prompt came up finally: "OPEN PORTAL TO HADES? Y/N?"

She smiled and typed "y". A massive thunderclap filled the center of the rings began to glow lavender, the very space and time parting as a gateway began to form.

Chris snapped his blade to life and charged at Bunnie, only to be brought off his feet with another kinetic burst from Darius. He flipped this time ready for it, activating his kinetic damping field, the grip on him loosen, landing and jumping at the main console, his blade coming down with vertical slash. "I said 'Back away'!" Chris said, the blade missing her as she jumped to the side, the controls exploding and sparking when the blade sunk in.

Bunnie kicked at the back of Chris' legs hoping to force him to his knees but her foot hit the plated boot of his uniform, causing her to grunt in pain and fall to the side.

"Idiot." Darius said, grabbing at Chris again. Now fully assimilated, his control and power was at it's maximum.

Chris felt a small pull on his body and kicked off from the console, sailing towards Darius, he turned his blade off and shoulder charged into him by altering his own kinetic value for a moment, knocking them both into the entrances forcefield and pinning Karen's body to the ground. "Karen, you have to wake up, fight it!" He shouted, shaking her by the shoulders.

"Too little, too late, hedgehog.." Darius' voice echoed, a pair of red energy beams hitting Chris in the chest and knocking him to the floor, his boots leaving a small spark trail as he slid into a stack of crates.

HADES DIMENSION

Miles goggles light up as his homemade portal began to a weak signal, he hit his head on a shelve as he snapped upward, grabbing hold of it and growling, he jumped out of the crawl space he was in and flipped the goggles to the top of his head, He ran over his jumpsuit half unzipped still from the heat, he started typing at the homemade computer, obviously pieced together from several other systems. Beady little eyes scanning the screen, he flipped another switch nearby and spoke into low lying microphone. "Boss, I think we're getting the signal, it's weak but it's starting to transmit."

"Excellent, get the main portal ready." Mastermind's voice said calmly.

"Roger." Miles said, turning a few more knobs he set the experimental build he had for a portal to transmit to a much larger one outside. Heading to the door, he let out a high pitched gasp as he bumped into Scourge, his own reflection casting back at him from the blue hedgehog's sunglasses. "What are you doing here?"

"What kind of welcome is that, buddy?" Scourge grinned and lifted his glasses, looking down at the half exposed chest of Miles. "You know our big chance is coming up.."

Miles sneered at him and zipped up his suit to the neck, hiding what cleavage and feminine curves that were visible. He gave a frustrated grunt at Scourge, one of the only two who knew about his little accident a while back. "Yes, and oddly enough you're coming with us I hear."

"Doesn't mean we all have to go, Miles." Scourge said, looking over Miles' smaller frame, circling him, running a hand over his shoulder. "You know if a certain other hedgehog had an accident…the next world we go to could have a nice chunk of it belonging to you.."

Miles slapped his hand away and pushed him back. "You had your chance, now do your job, so I can do mine." He grabbed a set of bags he'd obviously prepared and pushed him out the door, locking it behind him, the computers continuing to transmit.

NEXUS – DEPARTURE AND ARRIVAL PORTALS

"You just don't see you've lost have you?" Darius growled, exerting more energy and draining it from Karen's body, Chris' body flying back into another set of rails, almost sending him over the edge to the deadly energy fields below. "Either way, I win." Darius shot towards him and with a surge of kinetic energy he landed an uppercut on the Time Warrior, sending him stumbling again. "I kill you, I win!" He threw another punch, this time he felt a rib crack as it impacted. "I escape, I WIN." He sunk another punch fueled with power at his shoulder, shattering it. "You kill me in Karen..I STILL WIN!" he laughed and picked up a massive metal crate with his focused energy and held it above him, ready to finish Chris off, "With your death, the escape of all of Hades will be just the beginning, our leader has much larger plans in mind! Ashamed you won't be around to see it!"

"Chris you're going to have to stop dodging and kill him or at the least wound him, he's going to kill you!" Recon shouted at his wounded almost unconscious partner.

Chris opened his eyes, his head was ringing and his body felt like it was on fire with all the pain. He mustered enough to raise his right hand up to stop Darius' lethal smashing motion with his energy shield, it's blue hue blinking as it's reserves began to fail with each massive impact.

"Chris you need to do something!"

"If I do anything extreme, Karen might not make it!"

Another swing, the shield power drained again.

"He's going to use her body until it's as old and drained as the other one! If he makes it through that portal—" Recon's voice crackled as another swing nearly broke through the shield.

"No! She can be saved!" Chris shouted, gritting his teeth.

"Chris he's using her so you can't stop him, don't you see that, you think Karen would want you to lose him because of her! she's gone, don't let him win by keeping her like this!"

The shield collapsed, Darius throw the crate aside, picking up another larger one.

"I have to admit, I didn't think I'd get the chance to kill you myself, just your little whore of a mate! You're an added bonu—" Chris fired the last of his energy reserved into his kinetic displacers, shooting past him with a flash of green light, his plasma blade cutting Darius' host in half at the waist, the bottom half falling down as the parasite inside began to lose control.

Karen's eyes went wide and then shut, a moment later they opened lazily, a red glow beginning to leave them. He used the last of his reserves left in his dying host and send a hammer like blow to the back of Chris' spine, sending him crashing down, bother their energy reserves spent.

Bunnie finished and fried the control panels in front of her, turning to grab the two transport modules, throwing them through the portal and then glancing back at the two battling titans. "Darius, we're leaving!"

Darius felt death creeping up on him, his host's death moments ago, and now was going to pull him down with it. He had one last chance. Turning towards the retreating rabbit, he locked eyes with her, before she could react he transferred into her unprepared mind, locking her consciousness away as reality took new roots and he looked upon the remains of Chris and his old host, both now intertwined with each other.

"I think that makes us even then.." he said, his voice suppressing Bunnie's already. He turned and jumped through seconds before the main consoles exploded, the rings suddenly stopping and their internal mechanisms exploding from the sudden shock and stop of motion.

Chris opened his eyes weakly and saw Karen's dead eyes staring back at him, a sudden realization of what he'd done washing over him. He managed to get up on his knees and picked her torso up, looking at her, he didn't see the shields drop down, the portal shut down. He didn't hear the commando team rushing in to secure the room, or the sound of alarms shutting off. He didn't smell the faint hint of the perfume she wore. He couldn't feel the warmth of life from her. He couldn't process anything.

Everything was gone at that moment, just the image of her glassy eyes staring back at him.

Finally breaking free from the prison seemingly frozen time, he closed his eyes…and screamed.

MOBIUS – DIMENSION SiGMA-ALPHA-TANGO-1-3

Local Date:3235

Tails heard a massive explosion in the distance, enough to shake him from his nightwatch post near the village of Knothole. The explosion spawned what seemed to be bright light, possibly fire, and it was deep inside the Great Forest, close to the skirting of the Great Mountains. Picking up a set of binoculars, he peered into the trees, unable to make much of anything out at first, then just as the lenses were about to focus in on something, everything, light and all, vanished.

He scanned a few times more, then dismissed it as his imagination, which as he'd gotten older was prone to play many…interesting tricks on him he'd found.

He shook off the feelings in him again and started to scan another section of the forest, yawning softly and leaning back on the small stool the tower had. The lack of any real threats was starting to wear on everyone, including him. It was one thing to be fighting for freedom against a tyrant like Robotnik, but lately all his efforts seemed to be trying to create new technology, most resources directed away from the Freedom Fighters.

It was the same thing over and over, Robotnik would hatch a plan, they'd stop it, he'd curse Sonic and then they'd have at least another week of silence before things would stir up again.

He yawned again.

He just wished something NEW would happen.

The End?